On libraries and gaming

There are lots of librarians out there who fundamentally object to the presence of video games in library collections or video gaming programs for teens and other age groups in library buildings. As someone who has spent countless hours of his life with a video game controller in his hand gaping slack-jawed at a flashing screen, I'm more ambivalent about the implications of gaming in the library.

I recently received an article written by some random freelancer decrying the presence of games in the library. In high dudgeon (and, presumably, with veins popping out of his neck and forehead), he yells into my email inbox:

Unfortunately, it appears that this country's librarians have decided to do their part in the dumbing-down of America. What has happened to this country? All of the librarians I have known were in love with the written word and truly enjoyed opening the door to their world to young people. Perhaps, today's crop of young librarians would be better served answering their calling as arcade attendants and movie theatre managers. Generations of Americans who valued education and insisted that their children understand not only the importance but the enjoyment of the written word, have given way to barely functioning illiterates who spend hour after hour trying to get to the next level of Guitar Hero.

He then goes on to decry the decline of literacy in the United States. Now, I am completely sympathetic to his viewpoint, but public libraries are not and never have been strictly educational institutions. While public education is one of it's core functions, the library's mission is to provide recreational and entertainment opportunities to the people as well. In that sense, I have little problem offering gaming programs to library users. In fact, I do it myself on a regular basis with my teen patrons. They have fun, and it's a way to get people into the library that might not otherwise show up. If they wind up picking up a book on the way out, all the better. Also, I'm not sure the library is even capable of fighting the growing ignorance among the American public in any meaningful way. We do what we can with the resources that we have, but ultimately the most important bulwarks against mass ignorance are the public school system and the press. Perhaps if the schools were not turning out "barely functioning illiterates" on an industrial scale, or if the press were more interested in reporting real news than scandal and celebrity gossip, then librarians would have a bigger audience for more edifying programs and services. Trust me, I'd rather be reading great works of literature with my teens than refereeing video game tournaments.

At the same time, some people within the field take an enthusiasm for gaming too far and try to imbue it with educational functions that it simply does not have in order to justify offering games and gaming programs to folks such as our irate library user above. In a recent article in the New York Times on gaming programming at the New York Public Library's central branch on 42nd Street in Manhattan, a library official argues that

“What we’re seeing is that in addition to simply helping bring kids into the library in the first place, games are having a broader effect on players, and they have the potential to be a great teaching tool,” Mr. Martin said. “If a kid takes a test and fails, that’s it. But in a game, if you fail you get to take what you’ve learned and try again...In a lot of these games you have to understand the rules, you have to understand the game’s world, its story. For some games you have to understand its history and the characters in order to play effectively.”

This is the "everything bad is good for you" argument, and I think it's bogus. While I don't have any empirical research to support me at my fingertips, I don't think that the skills that gamers learn while playing a particular game are really transferable outside that context. It's true that many of today's games are very complex and have very rich story lines, but I just finished playing Call of Duty 4 on XboX360 and I don't think that because of that, I've gained some sort of expertise in counterinsurgency techniques. And observing the teens that come to my gaming programs, they're certainly skilled at the games that they play but many of them have trouble dealing with the types of complex arguments and ideas offered in books and other print media, partially because their bias toward the visual has reduced their attention spans. Playing games repeatedly makes you a better gamer, but in itself such activity probably won't help you become a better student or a more informed and active citizen. If we offer gaming services to our patrons it's more or less for entertainment purposes only.

Bye-bye to municipal wi-fi?

When I lived in Philadelphia, the announcement of a free or low-cost municipal wi-fi network was an exciting development. It represented an innovative infrastructural investment that spurred other cities around the country to take up similar projects. But as an article in today's New York Times makes clear, these projects were flawed from the start and are stagnating because they were based on a "public-private partnership," for-profit model that was not truly municipal. The networks were not to be owned and operated strictly by the city but would be contracted out to private tech firms, namely Earthlink. From the article:

“The entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects,” said Sascha Meinrath, technology analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

Mr. Meinrath said that advocates wanted to see American cities catch up with places like Athens, Leipzig and Vienna, where free or inexpensive Wi-Fi already exists in many areas.
He said that true municipal networks, the ones that are owned and operated by municipalities, were far more sustainable because they could take into account benefits that help cities beyond private profit, including property-value increases, education benefits and quality-of-life improvements that come with offering residents free wireless access.

Benefits beyond private profit? What a novel idea!

Nobody expects to make a profit out of public transit but it's a necessary piece of any community's infrastructure and that's why government government has to put up the money for it. The same idea applies to investing in free or low-cost high-speed Internet access. Unfortunately many cities such as Philadelphia simply don't have the capital budgets to make such investments. That's why it's probably necessary to have a commitment at the state and/or federal levels to make real municipal wi-fi possible, but in an environment where significant public spending on anything else besides weaponry is anathema, I don't see that happening any time soon. It's completely insane that the richest country in the history of the planet can't come up with the will or the money to make such important and necessary investments for its own economic and cultural well-being, but I'm used to these things by now, I suppose.

As an aside, the article briefly touches on an aspect of the municipal wi-fi issue that has potential relevance for public libraries. “If we don’t have Internet, that means I’ve got to take the bus to the public library after dark, and around here, that’s not always real safe,” says a young North Philly resident who has come to rely on the low-cost network and a laptop provided for free by a local community organization. For many public libraries, free computer and Internet resources has become one of, if not the most, important ways to get patrons in the library. Sometimes I get the feeling that I don't work at a library but a big computer lab that just happens to have some books in it. My library and many others provide patrons with a free wi-fi hotspot, but having a city-wide network would be preferable for a variety of reasons. It's possible that the adoption of municpal wi-fi networks might reduce demand for library services, but I'd like to think that this isn't a zero-sum game and that patrons come to the library for a variety of reasons. Like the books, for example.

John Berry: how market ideology is killing librarianship

John Berry's editorial in the February 15 issue of Library Journal is brief, but it ruthlessly critiques the ways in which business-oriented management practices are destroying the foundations of the library profession. The money paragraph:

The resulting “destination” libraries resemble the cookie-cutter design of the grocery store, aimed at making sure everyone who comes in goes out with “product” (books, CDs, DVDs, or downloads). What the patron takes is of as little concern to the storekeeper librarian as it is to the supermarket manager. The success of the enterprise is measured in the number of products collected by patrons, now called “customers.” It is no longer measured in the usefulness or impact of the service on the quality of life in the community served.

Read the whole thing here. Spot on. I couldn't have said it better myself.

5 Theses on Public Libraries and Social Networking

Lately I've been thinking a lot about public libraries and their use of social networking sites in their work with children and young adults, and because I'm feeling lazy right now, I just want to list some ideas I've had in this regard Martin Luther style. I suppose I just have 90 more to go.

1. The basic concepts behind Web 2.0 and social networking sites particularly have the potential to radically democratize media and communications. However, because of the fact that most of these technologies have been bought up by enormous corporations, the profit motive overrides any other social concern.
2. As such, social networking sites in their current form are just massive data-mining operations to acquire information about kids’ cultural interests and consumer preferences in order to sell products to them. This is insidious and evil.
3. Through these sites, corporations take our precious social bonds and friendships and transform them into a means of making money. This is also insidious and evil.
4. Public libraries, as institutions fundamentally concerned with non-commercial ends such as educating the people to participate in a free and democratic society, should not uncritically embrace such technologies in their work, especially with children and young adults.
5. Someone needs to create social networking and Web 2.0 tools in a non-profit, open source format that they will not sell off to Google, Yahoo, Fox or some other conglomerate. Until then, I suppose public librarians will be forced to make use of tools such as MySpace or Facebook while also informing young library users that through these sites, companies are using them as marketing tools.

Young adult librarians interested in providing media literacy resources to their users (and anyone else interested in these issues) should check out Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People, by Anne Elizabeth Moore.